[lordnacho]

What I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance?

It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing.

Why do people think this chat control thing will be effective?

[timschmidt]

I think most people, if pressed, would share your evaluation. However, even though surveillance is always marketed and sold as a tool for law enforcement, I think the people proposing such bills are aware that it's primary use is for political control, power, and espionage.

Safety is the bait in the bait and switch. So the measure is not whether or not surveillance actually works for making people safer. But whether or not it actually works as bait.

[boltzmann-brain]

While it's easy to start believing this is the only motive, the truth of the matter is that a lot of stupid people do crime. So even if you only catch the stupid criminals, you still catch a bunch of criminals.

And I mean _stupid_. You wouldn't believe how intensely stupid some of those people are, but read some court records and you will come away deeply surprised we are making it as a species.

But yes, there is no doubt that what you mention is a major motivator for at least some of the people pushing for it.

P.S. I'm not saying "stupid => does crime", please don't read that into what I said above - I'm just saying that `#("stupid and also does crime")` is a large number.

[timschmidt]

> While it's easy to start believing this is the only motive

No one said that. Files leaked by Snowden describe NSA's activities as durable, even against legal attack, thanks to layers upon layers of digital, procedural, legal, and other forms of defense in depth. Among them, plausible deniability and dual use technologies. You have pointed toward both. So their tactics worked on you.

> But yes, there is no doubt that what you mention is a major motivator for at least some of the people pushing for it.

Don't forget that ubiquitous surveillance is exactly the tool most useful for blackmailing or discrediting opponents as well.

[boltzmann-brain]

> No one said that

that is not true. User lordnacho clearly expressed he thinks Chat Control will be ineffective, and from that one can easily take that ineffective initiatives should not be supported except in cases of wanting to abuse the infrastructure. It's a trope common enough that it comes implied and does not have to be spelled out.

[timschmidt]

> User lordnacho clearly expressed he thinks Chat Control will be ineffective

Feel free to respond to lordnacho directly. I don't accept communication for them. Nor can I speak for them. The only way to address the issue you have with what you feel they've implied is to talk to them about it.

> and from that one can easily take that ineffective initiatives should not be supported except in cases of wanting to abuse the infrastructure.

Your assumption.

I find the fact that mass surveillance is largely ineffective at improving safety to be incidental and ironic. It is highly effective at removing safety and liberty. That's the salient point.

Much like torture, mass surveillance corrupts those who practice it, which has led principled people to oppose it on grounds including human rights and an awareness of atrocities committed with the aid of surveillance in the past. As Benjamin Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Do you deserve liberty and safety?

> It's a trope common enough that it comes implied and does not have to be spelled out.

You'd do well to respond to what's been said, and not to what you think has been implied. Responding to perceived implication didn't serve you here.

https://www.etsy.com/market/don%27t_hear_what_i_didn%27t_say...

[1oooqooq]

you don't need surveillance. there's one stupid fellon publishing in the open about persecuting political opposition and nothing happened. what reading their private communication gain?

[matheusmoreira]

It's not about bad guys. It's about wrongthink. It's about surveilling the political opposition.

They could not care less about children. Kids are just a political weapon they use to create a pretext for global warrantless mass surveillance.

[spwa4]

Indeed. They just again further defunded both education and youth projects. So what you say is perfectly accurate: they could not care less about children.

[danaris]

This is a very complex question.

Part of the answer is that they think the surveillance will be magically omniscient, because it's technology they don't understand.

Part of the answer is that they think that if there's a tool they could possibly have to give law enforcement more power, they must have it.

Part of it is that they don't care so much about actual bad guys, but about exercising absolute control over the general populace.

Part of it is that they don't believe that crime can actually be eliminated, but they do believe that they have to continue to take all possible measures against it.

And part of it is just that they don't think it's politically safe for them to oppose a measure like this (similar to, but not quite the same as, the second point above).

[slaw]

It is never about bad guys or protect the children. It is a political control.

[IncreasePosts]

Ask your local corporate IT guy how many people browse porn on work computers, even though they must know it's logged.

[kevin_thibedeau]

I've had an unexpected redirect from a hacked Wordpress site in the past. One of the reasons why I will never go without an abuse blocker + NoScript on work computers. I had been trialing going without at the start of that job and lasted a few months but that incident permanently removed any latent guilt.

[nullfield]

Non-whitelisted extensions are blocked in Edge, and Edge is the default browser. Chrome/FF are less locked down, more due to incompetence than not trying to be heavy-handed.

…of course, Zscaler with “all Wordpress sites blocked” is also a thing, along with the majority/nearly all of European non-English countries, because god forbid you want to read the emmet docs or something.

[wobfan]

While true, at least in my understanding of the world there is a massive difference in people involved in CSAM and people watching porn. The latter one is probably like 80% of humans with access to internet, the first one is hopefully a tiny bit smaller. Also, people are probably very aware that the latter is widely allowed and done by mostly everyone, and the first one is highly illegal, highly enforced and morally completely wrong.

I would not mind browsing porn on my work PC. I wouldn't do it, but I would not have a very bad feeling while or after it, because so be it. I don't think my employer can fire me for that.

I would mind about doing CSAM activities though.

[morkalork]

There is already a market for secure phones used by organized crime, this will only intensify the demand (plus another opportunity for to infiltrate them like has also happened before)

[msm_]

As a devil's advocate, there are also criminal groups, right now, that do actual crime, that operate on discord. 99% of criminals likely don't have enough knowledge to maintain proper opsec, so spying on chats could in principle help here.

On the other hand, there are also criminal groups, right now, that do actual crime, that operate on discord. Going after them would be trivial in comparison, and yet we introduce extreme spying laws instead.

[array_key_first]

I think a lot of those criminals use clear text channels because it works. If it no longer works, then they move.

Meaning, chat control might pressure criminals. For a bit. Until they wisen up and use more secure protocols and end points.

Which, not only exist, but are very easy to use and wide spread.

[amarant]

How hard would it be for law enforcement today, before chat control, to get chat logs out of discord?

Discord isn't exactly known for it's privacy features, still I imagine there's some challenge?

If the effort is low, and they're not doing it today, they're not going to do it after chat control either.

[array_key_first]

> How hard would it be for law enforcement today, before chat control, to get chat logs out of discord?

Not sure, speculating: somewhat hard.

Discord must comply with government subpoenas, so if you're the FBI it's easy. If you're law enforcement, I imagine they tell you to go kick rocks if you don't have a warrant.

Law enforcement is pretty bad and mostly lazy. They can't be bothered to pull people over going 20 over, let alone get a warrant for every wannabe punk.

If you're not in the US, then I imagine the effort is insurmountable.

> If the effort is low, and they're not doing it today, they're not going to do it after chat control either.

No - but it can be automated, which is the issue.

Sort of like how the US was wire tapping virtually all internet traffic at one point with PRISM.

Then I imagine the "law enforcement" is done using machine learning and heauristics.

Do you use black slang? Put him on the list. Is your name not that white sounding? That's right, the list. Are you on hacker news? You guessed it - the list.

I mean, that's pretty much how automated facial detection works now. And yeah, it sucks.

[xinayder]

I had a similar debate with a friend of mine over a age verification law recently passed in Brazil. It mandates age verification for social media in order to restrict teenagers and children access to adult content, for example, or any other content that violates teenagers rights.

The law in question (PL2628/2022) doesn't mention CSAM or sexualized/erotic content depicting children or teenager by name. It's broader than that, it mentions that any content deemed offensive to children/teenagers, or that violates their rights as defined in the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, should be removed by social media.

My friend supports the law because he thinks it will stop 99.9% of the bad guys looking for CSAM on the internet because he believes they get their content from Instagram. I tried to explain to him the law won't do shit to stop the bad guys but instead just add more surveillance to people who aren't doing anything wrong, but he doesn't want to accept it, and even called me out saying I look like a defender of the bad guys, simply for the fact that I don't think mass surveillance and age verification of people is enough to stop wrongdoers on the internet, or to protect children.

[yupyupyups]

Edward Snowden reported that some NSA officers were routinely watching and sharing people's private nudes.

It's more than just "snooping occationally". Government officials are at the end of the day strangers, and it's not their business spying on people's private lives. Not only do they intend to infringe upon our privacy in one of the most intrusive ways possible, but also at gunpoint. Think about that.

[Yizahi]

Because they know and intend to target this law against regular people, not against bad guys. They are learning from the best in this field. Targeted very harsh punishments of the random people at random times do A LOT to chill political activity in the country, make hesitant people (a majority) shut up "just in case they are next ones to be targeted". People already with history of activity which may be randomly selected for prosecution will emigrate and thus exclude themselves from political environment. And this useful for left/centrists/right, regardless of the ideology, since all of them plan on shutting down opposition as soon as they are in power.

[api]

They don’t understand the technology and think it will magically apply everywhere.

Most politicians have no idea how anything works. Electric lights are simply magic, let alone the Internet. Obviously you can pass a law to make the wizards make the magic do whatever you want, right?

[thefz]

> What I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance?

Not only the bad guys, I will jump into any software that allow me to bypass this crap.

[lucketone]

It is additional tool. More tools -> better chance at catching the criminals.

Downsides are purely theoretical and only brought up by conspiracy theorists and academics.

(Technically correct, the best kind..)

[type0]

When every tool is a hammer, even a screw gets hammered in

[wqaatwt]

Better yet we can just put every single person not working for the government in prison. 100% success rate..